The Boomer Generation and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race. They see America merely as a vessel. They are merely a vessel for abstractions. And if you view America in such a way, then you are addicted to the serotonin rush. And I m addicted to a Big Mac. We need a big Mac to shoot this bitch. And I'm addicted to Bigfoot. So I'm going to smash your brain in with the Bible, idiots. I'm gonna smash your head in with a Bible. We're gonna eat a big mac or something, you stupid bitch! I think this is hysterical. Here's a clip from a clip that goes along with this episode. I don't know, I've never heard of Bigfoot before. Not even once. Who's got the clip? No e girls? Hashtag never egirls? No e Girls? Who's Got The Clippin' Clip? What's that clip about Bigfoot? And it's not even once? I have never heard him before. What s that clip you're talking about? Have you ever heard of him? Do you know who's that guy? Who's That Guy? ? Who s That Guy ? I've Never Heard of Bigfoot? I ve never heard Bigfoot before? The end of this episode is a little bit longer than the first half of the episode, but I think it's pretty funny, so I hope you enjoy the rest of it. Enjoy! I'll be back next week! xoxo, Tim Timestamps: 0:00:00 1:30 - Bigfoot 3:00 - What's That's That clip? 4:15 - I ve Never Ever Ever Ever? 5:00- Bigfoot 6:40 - What s That? 7:00 | Bigfoot 8:30 9:15 11:40 12:30 | I ve Ever heard of Sasquatch? 13:00 / 14: Is That A Big Mac? 15:00/ 16:30 / 17:30/16: What do you think of Bigfoot ? 17 - How do you like Bigfoot 18:40 / 16: What are you going to do with Bigfoot 19:40/ 21:10 22:10 / 22 :00
Transcript
Transcripts from "America First - Nicholas J. Fuentes" are sourced from the Knowledge Fight Interactive Search Tool. You can also explore and interact with the transcripts here.
00:02:39.000The boomer generation and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race.
00:59:20.000So tonight we're talking about all the details.
00:59:24.000We're going to get into what exactly happened yesterday.
00:59:28.000And we'll be talking about scenarios for what happens next, but it's not looking good.
00:59:34.000It looks like, and there were also unconfirmed reports that Israel struck a senior commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard as well, but it looks like yesterday was a decapitation strike.
00:59:51.000They killed a senior advisor for Hezbollah, although there were rumors that they were really after the leader of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, and they killed the leader of Hamas in Tehran.
01:00:05.000And so it's clear that this was a decapitation strike, extremely provocative, I would say intentionally provocative, and now there has to be an all-out response by Iran and its proxies.
01:00:19.000Iran strikes Israel directly, which it's rumored that the Iranian government approved a direct retaliatory strike on Israel today.
01:00:29.000If that happens, it will be the second direct attack on Israel by Iran in history after the first one in May.
01:00:41.000According to some sources, the purpose of the first strike
01:00:46.000And the methodology of it was to virtually map out the Israeli air defenses.
01:00:54.000So now that Iran knows, maybe this one could be more effective and more deadly or cause more damage.
01:01:03.000Either way, it could be a major escalation in this ongoing proxy war between Iran and Israel.
01:01:09.000And of course, the United States becomes deeper involved.
01:01:13.000So we'll talk about the whole situation.
01:01:15.000It is an emerging crisis, like I've been talking about for a long time.
01:01:21.000And I said literally on Friday, my show on Friday was about this.
01:01:26.000Based on the speech that Netanyahu gave on Wednesday and his meeting with Trump on Friday and the rumors that were going on last week, I said that was literally my show on Friday.
01:01:38.000I said, watch, there's going to be a false flag and Israel will use it to drag us into a war with Iran and Hezbollah.
01:04:35.000Are talking about because a lot of the people on our side said that it was a good appearance and they said it was funny and it was good energy and it was smart answers and I understand where people are coming from.
01:05:34.000To rewind the clock back to the day after Trump got shot, the day before the RNC, and the week before Joe Biden dropped out, they would do anything!
01:05:44.000Because on Sunday, July 14th, it looked like it was Trump's race to lose.
01:05:51.000He had a 70% chance of winning, according to the betting market, or shortly thereafter.
01:05:56.000And it looked like we had this in the bag.
01:05:58.000They were saying he would win New Jersey.
01:06:02.000They were saying he would win Virginia, Minnesota.
01:06:05.000But ever since, it has just been one disaster after another.
01:06:42.000She now is positive in terms of her favorability with the general population.
01:06:49.000Swing state lead has evaporated for Trump in all but two states, North Carolina and Pennsylvania, according to a new Bloomberg Morning Consult poll.
01:06:59.000And now, after all that, Trump goes to Chicago with this totally ridiculous idea that he's going to win black people over, and they just laugh at him.
01:10:05.000And the irony is I hate women, but I love Karens.
01:10:11.000Because the older I get, I'm not even that old, I'm turning 26 next month.
01:10:17.000But the older I get, I seriously have no tolerance for rudeness, I have no tolerance for sloppiness, I have no tolerance for inconsideration, people that don't follow the rules.
01:10:29.000I have no tolerance when things are out of place.
01:10:32.000Like, I went to Target today, and they had nothing in stock!
01:10:36.000They had no video games, they had no selection.
01:10:42.000And anyway, so thank God there is this Karen sitting behind us and she goes, shhh!
01:10:52.000And the kid keeps talking and she goes, shhh!
01:11:58.000And then, as we're leaving the movie theater, I hear, so the people, you know, lights come on, we see the people, it's a black woman, black dad, black kid, and they're walking out of the movie theater, and I overhear them saying, she goes, and it's a fucking kids movie!
01:12:17.000And I'm thinking, first of all, six years old is old enough to shut up during a movie.
01:14:01.000They just always, for the most part, 8 out of 10 times, 9 out of 10 times, just happen to be black.
01:14:10.000And I say to people I know, you know, if black people were known for being extremely courteous, and considerate, and polite, and conscientious, everybody would love them.
01:14:25.000Everybody would say, oh, black people are moving into our neighborhood?
01:15:43.000But I started to think you almost need, like, gangs of people to form and to just, like, wait for shit like this to happen and then just yell at these people.
01:15:56.000The other day, I was driving behind this car, it was a white lady, spoiler, it was actually a white lady, but this just goes to show I'm not a racist, okay?
01:16:04.000I was driving behind this lady, and I see her flick a cigarette out the window, and I swear, I chased her for blocks, trying to pull up next to her.
01:16:17.000To say, hey, bitch, don't throw your fucking trash out the window.
01:16:31.000But I'm becoming like this taxi driver, like Larry David Joker character.
01:16:39.000And I never thought I would be that guy, but now, now that I'm a little older, now that I am, now I am.
01:16:45.000And I also notice, because I care about things, you know, I care about, like, maintaining my things, and I work hard to maintain my things, and, you know, I care about standards.
01:16:57.000And you realize there's, like, this whole underclass population that doesn't care about anything.
01:17:01.000They don't care about how they look, they don't care about their stuff, they don't, they don't have jobs, they don't maintain their stuff.
01:17:09.000And this is who is taking over our country.
01:19:16.000Target not having things in stock and the shelves being messy and people standing in the doorway and people wearing flip-flops and you can't measure that.
01:19:25.000You can't measure going to a restaurant and the service is terrible because nobody cares.
01:19:33.000And that's the civilization that we're losing.
01:19:40.000I think we need to start small with intentional communities.
01:19:44.000I was skeptical of this at first, but I think we really need to get rid of the civil rights laws so that we can discriminate against who lives where.
01:19:54.000And then we need to build small, intentional communities and say, these are the expectations, this is how we like to live, and if you can't follow them, then get the fuck out.
01:20:06.000You know, we need to basically build like a breakaway civilization that says we care about nice things.
01:20:11.000We want to live where there's nice cafes and there's nice places to shop and people behave on the road and so on.
01:20:20.000We need to build these kinds of intentional communities.
01:20:40.000Now, and again, when I say the right to discriminate, I don't mean necessarily based on race, although I don't, you know, I don't think it's the craziest idea ever, but not necessarily, but just we need to have some standards.
01:20:54.000Again, I'm sick of being subjected to this.
01:20:59.000We are, this individualism thing's not working because we are affected by everybody else.
01:21:06.000You may be an individual, but you are affected by everybody else.
01:21:10.000You can't throw a rock without hitting somebody else that's gonna vote, that lives, works, spends leisure time near and around you, near and around where you live, where you sleep.
01:21:22.000And so we need to start to get it together.
01:21:25.000Even in these nice suburbs, you get black people driving into the suburbs, they try to break into every car and steal cars.
01:21:31.000I've just, I've had enough of the chaos and the anxiety and the fear and the disorderliness and the filth.
01:21:42.000And this is the kind of thing, this is also,
01:26:22.000We need facial recognition in all the parking lots so we can identify those that leave the shopping carts unattended in the parking lot and we can track them down and imprison them for a long time.
01:26:35.000And we can notify their families and put them on notice too.
01:29:17.000This is when like, you know, but hey, so anyway, but hey, no, the thing about bail fund for people that, you know, people that stand in front of the escalator, that was a joke.
01:29:28.000Just so everybody understands, I'm not calling for violence, but I am calling for public shaming.
01:29:33.000These people do need to be publicly shamed.
01:31:46.000The remark about Harris' racial identity came as Trump sought to court minority voters by addressing the National Association for Black Journalists convention in Chicago.
01:31:58.000He said, I've known her a long time indirectly, not directly very much, and she was always of Indian heritage, and she was only promoting Indian heritage.
01:32:07.000I didn't know she was black until a number of years ago when she happened to turn black.
01:32:13.000And now she wants to be known as black.
01:32:15.000So I don't know, is she Indian or is she black?
01:32:22.000He added, she became a black person and I think somebody should look into that.
01:32:27.000The vice president's father is black and from Jamaica and her mother was born in India.
01:32:32.000Harris graduated from the historically black Howard University in 1986 and was a member of a black sorority.
01:32:39.000Trump said at an evening rally in Harrisburg, everything about her rollout is phony and it's fake.
01:32:44.000Don't forget, four weeks ago, she was like considered the worst, not smart, terrible, the worst vice president in history.
01:32:51.000All of a sudden, she's the new Margaret Thatcher.
01:32:55.000With less than 100 days to go before the general election, the Trump team has been trying to expand its reach to voters who would not usually vote Republican.
01:33:04.000Creating an inclusive GOP was a key theme at the Republican National Convention earlier this month, and the campaign has pointed to polls showing Trump having expanded numbers of minority voters behind him.
01:33:16.000The Chicago event was an attempt at reaching black media with the message of how another Trump presidency could benefit the country.
01:33:24.000Trump said he had been the best president for the black population since Abraham Lincoln and spoke at length about Harris' administration letting in a record number of illegal immigrants during her term with President Biden, noting that the migrants would take over black jobs.
01:33:40.000Millions and millions of people that are happening to take black jobs, he said.
01:33:45.000Prompting an outcry from the audience and one of the panelists to say, what exactly is a black job?
01:33:51.000He said, a black job is anybody that has a job.
01:33:55.000His presence Tuesday was met with pushback from locals and from within the NABJ.
01:34:02.000Left-wing protesters organized a march outside the downtown Hilton location, and the co-chair of the NABJ convention stepped down from her role, arguing Trump was being platformed by being interviewed at the event.
01:34:15.000But Trump supporters applauded him for showing up to speak to a crowd that wouldn't necessarily vote for him.
01:34:54.000Why he would do it, I don't know, but he came to the Libertarian Convention, they called him an asshole.
01:35:00.000They protested him being there, they booed him, and then Trump wound up insulting them and saying, well, this is why you only ever get 3% after making all sorts of concessions.
01:35:12.000He said he would put a libertarian in the cabinet and he said that he would pardon the Silk Road founder and so on.
01:35:21.000And then they booed him and he said, well, that's why you only ever win 3%.
01:35:26.000He spoke at the Bitcoin Conference a few days ago in Tennessee.
01:35:30.000He actually got a pretty good reception.
01:35:32.000And then today he spoke at the National Association for Black Journalists.
01:35:37.000So, clearly there is a concerted effort.
01:35:40.000These genius campaign advisors, Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles, they think that they're being really clever.
01:35:50.000And they said, let's bring Trump out to these unexpected, surprising locations and try to bring in a new audience.
01:36:00.000And I suppose the message is that this is inclusive.
01:36:03.000And they've pulled other stunts along the same line, like at the RNC, where they invited Amber Rose.
01:36:10.000And they invited the leader of the Teamsters Union.
01:36:15.000And they invited people that weren't even Republicans.
01:36:20.000And the whole idea is, well, we're trying to expand the appeal to libertarians, to black people, to Hispanics, to normies.
01:36:45.000The black journalists didn't like him.
01:36:48.000And blacks, now that Kamala Harris is at the top of the ticket, they're going to turn out and they're going to vote on record numbers for Kamala Harris.
01:36:58.000And this, so let's isolate this aspect of it.
01:37:03.000The reason that Trump was there is because of this harebrained scheme, this flawed conventional logic of these Republican advisors, these consultants.
01:37:16.000And by the way, this is the conventional wisdom.
01:37:19.000This is the conventional wisdom that guided Trump 2020 and all of the failed Republican primary campaigns in 2016.
01:37:28.000This was the all too conventional wisdom that guided Mitt Romney and John McCain.
01:37:34.000And the conventional wisdom says this.
01:37:38.000The Republicans know they have a problem.
01:37:41.000Because their base is shrinking and dying.
01:37:54.000The white population is shrinking due to a fertility crisis and immigration.
01:37:59.000And so Republicans have said, well, we have to jump ship.
01:38:04.000These white people are not going to carry our party for very much longer.
01:38:08.000We need to start to pander to blacks and Hispanics.
01:38:11.000That's been the conventional thinking.
01:38:13.000Rather than win more white people, rather than turn out their conservative white base and try to appeal to their own people, instead they try to appeal to Democrats.
01:38:27.000Blacks historically vote 90% or more for Democrats.
01:38:32.000Hispanics historically vote 60% or more.
01:38:40.000So the Republicans have said rather than turn out more of our voters, rather than appeal to conservative Republicans, rather than appeal to white people,
01:39:08.000And of course, the one time that a Republican has really ran the table in recent history was in 2016, when Donald Trump abandoned that playbook.
01:39:46.000Sam Francis called them middle American radicals, people that aren't actually extremely religious, they're economically populist, but they care deeply about cultural issues.
01:39:58.000So they're populist on issues like trade, or healthcare, or unions.
01:40:05.000But they're conservative on issues like immigration and its cultural effect.
01:40:09.000They're conservative on the culture war, on things like guns.
01:40:14.000But they're not extremely religious and they're actually less conservative on issues like abortion or gay marriage.
01:40:19.000That is the demographic that Sam Francis called the middle American radical.
01:40:23.000That is the demographic that Steve Saylor said you need to win a little bit more of those and you can win the whole election.
01:40:30.000And that was effectively the playbook.
01:40:32.000That was the paleocon or the white nationalist, Sam Francis, Buchanan, Steve Saylor playbook that Trump ran on in 2016 that was actually successful, that actually worked, that actually won him the election.
01:40:48.000He wasn't speaking to the National Association of Black Journalists, and he didn't win black voters, and he horribly won Hispanic voters, but he won the white people.
01:40:58.000He won the poorly educated, remember that?
01:41:01.000The whites with the high school diploma.
01:41:05.000He won the working and middle class white people, and those were the white people that delivered by a very, very small margin, a landslide electoral victory in 16.
01:41:18.000When he shifted the playbook in 2020 and now in 2024, of course we don't know the outcome in 2024 yet, but when he changed the playbook in 2020 and started instead to try to appeal to the black voters and the Hispanics by trying to do the First Step Act and the Platinum Plan and giving financing to the historically black colleges, when he talked about black unemployment and those sorts of issues, he suffered greatly
01:41:48.000With those demographics that carried the election in 2016.
01:41:51.000He suffered with those poorer and less educated white people.
01:41:56.000And that's why even if there wasn't cheating in 2020, he might have had a problem.
01:42:01.000And we're doing the same thing in 2024.
01:42:04.000And that's why Trump was at this summit.
01:42:06.000Because there is this delusional mindset.
01:42:10.000And in some sense, it's even less motivated by an electoral urgency.
01:42:16.000It's even less so that Republicans think that winning the blacks... First of all, it's never gonna happen, okay?
01:42:46.000Hispanics actually differentiate themselves from blacks, and you saw this during the BLM riots.
01:42:51.000For example, in Chicago, the Hispanic neighborhoods were actually peaceful, because the Hispanics were literally patrolling the streets with guns.
01:43:01.000And kicking the black people out during the BLM riots.
01:43:05.000So the blacks and Hispanics has always been an uneasy coalition within the Democratic Party.
01:43:10.000So increasingly, Trump is successfully increasing his share of the Hispanic vote.
01:43:24.000So we do have to differentiate, and it's not to say I don't think that appealing to Hispanics is the best idea ever, but it's a little bit more plausible.
01:43:32.000You're never going to win the black people, and I'm going to tell you why.
01:43:37.000Number one, black people support the Democrats, even if they're ideologically conservative.
01:43:45.000Do you know that there is no way that you can break down the black voting cohort?
01:43:53.000And they will vote for Republicans, a majority of them.
01:43:56.000And what I mean by that is you can look at older black people, you can look at younger black people.
01:47:30.000Aiden Ross had Playboi Carti on a stream.
01:47:32.000Aiden Ross paid Playboi Carti all this money, this famous rapper, to come on a stream, and Playboi Carti came in, said a few words, and left, and then bragged about how he scammed him.
01:47:44.000And there was, I think it was the same guy or somebody else, played cards and cheated, and everybody saw on the livestream.
01:47:52.000And there was another one, that big prank channel, I forget the guy's name, I think
01:47:58.000He got scammed by another rapper, I think Quavo, and the guy said, I'll kill you because you told people that I scammed you.
01:48:05.000And a lot of people are starting to see, hey, wait a second, these people just don't play by the rules.
01:48:09.000Like, these people just think the rules don't apply.
01:48:11.000They're just sort of ignorant and rude.
01:48:42.000The only reason we say that is because you're not allowed to call them a group.
01:48:46.000You know, we live in this era where, oh, you know, there are no groups except for white when we want to blame white people for our problems.
01:48:53.000Well, then we could talk about groups having collective guilt and collective problems when it's Jews or black people.
01:49:24.000You know, it's, we have to call it a community because to call them, to say the black people in the country is to generalize based on race, which is not allowed.
01:49:33.000But white people just need to accept, you know what?
01:50:49.000When you ignore them, well, you're neglecting them.
01:50:53.000When you pander to them, well, that's cynical and insincere and you don't really mean it.
01:50:59.000When Republicans don't do something for them, it's because they don't care about black people.
01:51:03.000When Republicans do something for black people, well, it's never enough.
01:51:08.000When they get endless subsidies and programs, and on net they get more government services than they pay in, well, it's never enough until they actually get reparations.
01:51:23.000So, you know, this is not just about Republicans.
01:51:27.000White people need to sort of wake up and realize we don't owe these people anything.
01:54:44.000A little bit of self-respect and a little bit of dignity and a little bit of pride.
01:54:50.000And people might say, well, you're insensitive.
01:54:53.000Well, the way you're saying it comes across racist.
01:54:55.000I don't really care because I think that for so long, for too long, white people have taken a lot of abuse and white people have been taught to be ashamed of who they are.
01:55:07.000And white people have been taught that we owe the world an apology, that we owe the world something?
01:55:13.000White people have been taught that we're second-class citizens, that we should cower?
01:55:17.000White people have been taught that we should avert our gaze, that we have to worship criminals?
01:55:22.000And so if this is a little aggressive, if this is a little energetic, we're too bad.
01:55:27.000You know, we've had the opposite for way too long.
01:55:30.000It's been a national humiliation of white people, national disrespect towards white people.
01:55:38.000And so white people need to get a little bit of self-respect back to say, you know what?
01:55:44.000Fuck you if you think I owe you something.
01:57:24.000Susie Wiles said, we don't care if Karens leave our party.
01:57:27.000We're replacing them with blacks and Hispanics.
01:57:31.000And we're the dutiful voters of the GOP.
01:57:34.000And they're going to drag the candidate out to these humiliation rituals and be subjected to a hostile line of questioning from black people that won't give them a chance.
01:59:25.000This is one of the most popular men in the history of the country.
01:59:28.000He should only be getting a hero's welcome and he should be subjected to tough questions.
01:59:35.000Maybe from the institutions, maybe from like a serious network, maybe from like an institutional network, not from some black caucus where they're all late.
01:59:44.000I was late to the show, I'm a bit of a hypocrite.
01:59:47.000But I'm not here to meet the president.
02:01:58.000And I think the only reason some people are enamored with what happened today is because it's so refreshing to just get off the script.
02:02:06.000To get Trump off the script, away from the same stories over and over again, and onto something fresh, and something a little edgy, and a little bit funny.
02:02:55.000But back in 15 and 16, I would watch everything and I would really watch the body language.
02:03:02.000I would pay attention to how he handled different situations because it seemed like there was nothing he didn't know how to handle.
02:03:08.000He will go on Stephen Colbert, who's like a pretty intelligent, I would say, I mean, you know, he's like a liberal idiot, but he went to Northwestern.
02:03:15.000He's a pretty intelligent guy and a liberal comedian.
02:03:21.000If you're Trump and you're going up against a pretty intelligent, liberal satirist, like that's his job as on The Daily Show or The Stephen Colbert Report.
02:03:30.000That's kind of like a difficult thing to navigate as a politician, to strike the right line there.
02:04:53.000The thing that I love the most is the attack the interviewer because they were late.
02:04:59.000Which is really funny to say to the National Association of Black Journalists, to a room full of black people, to say, hey, you held me up for 35 minutes.
02:05:31.000I don't think it's at the level he was at in 16.
02:05:34.000But if the campaign was more like this, and here's my point.
02:05:39.000I think the campaign consultants put him in this position because they thought he was going to go in and wow the crowd because they don't understand black people and they don't understand the electorate and they don't understand the aforementioned dynamic.
02:05:53.000So, La Savita and Susie Wiles put him there for the same reason that they put him at the Libertarian Convention.
02:06:04.000And they think that Trump is going to be accepted.
02:06:07.000They underestimate how much we're hated and how we're really underdogs.
02:06:11.000And the reason that we're hated is because we're doing the things that they actually don't like.
02:06:17.000And anyway, in spite of that, in spite of the fact that he was placed there in what I think was a setup,
02:06:27.000It was still in some way successful because it captures how Trump used to be.
02:06:32.000He was probably put there to say, hey man, I was like, you know, gay financing to these HBCUs, the historically black colleges and universities.
02:06:41.000Instead it was confrontational and you saw that old Trump with an edge where he said, you know, Kamala's not really black and so on.
02:07:49.000In spite of that, he turned it around because Trump excels when he's in a challenging environment.
02:07:55.000And he excelled because he went off script and was edgy and confrontational and he fought with the people he was supposed to, you know, wrap his arms around like Jeb Bush and bring him into the big tent.
02:08:07.000So I think there's a lot to learn from what happened today, but it was a little bit pathetic.
02:08:11.000Everybody that I, some of the pro-Trump people that I talked to, they're like, oh, that was great.
02:09:53.000But I think that that's more just desperation at this point, which is really sort of sad.
02:10:00.000If Trump getting laughed at and jeered and heckled by black people in Chicago while he says, hey, I was good to you guys, but you were late.
02:10:08.000If that's the best we could do, we're in trouble.
02:10:13.000So anyway, that's my feelings about that event with Trump.
02:10:20.000Uh, like I said, I think that Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles, they think that he was going to go in there and be the rock star and all those lines about black people are going to play really well.
02:16:00.000And we'll talk a little bit about Israel, then I'm just gonna end the show.
02:16:04.000So our other big story tonight, which I didn't think we'd get to, but we now are, is this.
02:16:11.000And this is kind of a follow up on yesterday.
02:16:14.000So yesterday, Israel conducted a major strike in the capital of Lebanon, Beirut, where they were targeting the leader of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, but they were not able to locate him.
02:16:25.000And so instead, they killed a senior advisor named Fouad Shakur, I think is the name, or Shukur.
02:16:35.000And so that was the first strike in the afternoon.
02:16:38.000We covered that yesterday, which was a pretty major provocation.
02:16:41.000But then later in the evening, it was reported that Israel assassinated the political leader of Hamas inside Iran, in Iran's capital of Tehran.
02:16:53.000And it's notable because, well, it's notable in itself, but it's notable because the leader of Hamas was visiting Tehran for the inauguration of Iran's new president.
02:17:04.000So this is a pretty dramatic provocation.
02:17:09.000And it looks like because of this assassination, we may be on an inevitable path towards a regional war.
02:17:17.000It's not inevitable yet, but it is far more likely today than it was two days ago.
02:17:25.000So the background on this, of course, I'll bring everybody up to speed very quickly.
02:17:56.000Hezbollah denied responsibility for it.
02:17:59.000Israel says it was a rocket intended for an Israeli military base, which was just a little bit of a ways away on top of a mountain.
02:18:07.000Hezbollah says it was a failed Iron Dome missile.
02:18:12.000Either way, there's all these dead people in occupied Israeli territory.
02:18:17.000Israel blamed Hezbollah and said that they would seek revenge.
02:18:21.000So like I said yesterday, their retaliation was to kill one of the top Hezbollah commanders in the capital of Lebanon, which is deep into Lebanese territory in Beirut.
02:18:32.000Hezbollah prepared to respond, but it wasn't over yet, because then, as I said later in the evening,
02:18:38.000The political leader of Hamas, which is the Islamist group that controls the Gaza Strip and was responsible for the October 7th attack, was killed in Tehran.
02:18:49.000It says, quote, Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said that Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh was assassinated in Tehran, where he had been attending the inauguration of the country's new president.
02:19:01.000Hours before the killing of Mr. Haniyeh in the Iranian capital, Israeli fighter jets carried out a separate operation in the southern suburbs of Beirut and killed Fouad Shouker, a senior member of Hezbollah, the Lebanese militia that, like Hamas, is backed by Iran.
02:19:19.000Hezbollah confirmed on Wednesday that Mr. Shouker had been killed in the Israeli strike on a building in a densely populated Beirut suburb.
02:19:27.000It was not clear how Mr. Haniyeh had been killed.
02:19:31.000Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said on Wednesday that the U.S.
02:19:36.000would rather defend Israel if it faces attacks in response to its airstrike in Beirut that targeted a Hezbollah commander and the assassination of Ismail Haniyeh.
02:19:48.000Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has issued an order for Iran to strike Israel directly.
02:20:05.000Shortly after Iran announced that Hania had been killed, the anonymous sources asked that their names not be published because they were not authorized to speak publicly.
02:20:15.000Iran and Hamas have accused Israel of the assassination.
02:20:18.000Israel, which is at war with Hamas in Gaza, has neither acknowledged nor denied killing Mr. Hania, who was in Tehran, for the inauguration of Iran's new president.
02:20:29.000Israel has a long history of killing enemies abroad, including Iranian nuclear scientists and military commanders.
02:20:36.000So now, of course, this is like the most provocative thing that Israel can do.
02:20:43.000They first assassinated a Hezbollah commander in the capital of Lebanon, something the United States explicitly told Israel not to do.
02:20:53.000It's something that Hezbollah said was a red line.
02:21:48.000Low level, low intensity, not very deadly fighting.
02:21:51.000Again, low yield explosives on smaller checkpoints.
02:21:56.000There's been only one other strike on Beirut to date.
02:22:00.000For Israel to go into a country's capital, not on the border, but in their capital, deep into their territory, to strike in a densely populated suburb, a decapitation strike on the leadership.
02:22:15.000I'm trying to give you a sense for how provocative that is.
02:22:20.000That is not the kind of fighting that has been going on since October 7th, which is a border skirmish.
02:22:29.000Compared to going deep into Lebanese territory with fighter jets, bombing their capital, killing a political leader.
02:22:38.000And understand, Lebanon is a fledgling, small state.
02:22:43.000And Hezbollah, which is sort of an unofficial representative of Lebanon and has seats in their government, has been in open conflict with Israel.
02:23:18.000To go across the entire region, into the capital of Iran, a country that they're not directly at war with, and to carry out an airstrike there, or whatever it was, it's not clear actually, but to carry out an assassination of a political leader there,
02:23:33.000During the inauguration of their president in the midst of a democratic process is so provocative.
02:23:41.000I'm trying to give you an idea by explaining in detail what precisely they're doing.
02:24:59.000Israel has carried out retaliatory strikes, for example, on a port in Yemen, which the Houthis control.
02:25:07.000And they've had a border skirmish against Hezbollah in Lebanon.
02:25:10.000But to bomb the Lebanese capital, Lebanon is not directly involved, to bomb Iran in their capital and kill the leader of Hamas, it's a very provocative action.
02:25:22.000And this mirrors almost exactly what they did in May.
02:25:27.000In May, Israel went into Syria and bombed the Iranian consulate
02:25:34.000Killing leaders of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard.
02:25:38.000And I talked about back then how provocative that was.
02:25:41.000Once again, they're bombing a capital of a country that they're not directly at war with, and they kill political leaders.
02:25:49.000And I said back then, this is against the most foundational
02:25:54.000Conventions on warfare that are maintained by every member state of the United Nations.
02:27:46.000Hezbollah, which has 150,000 missiles, the Houthis, which have missiles, the Syrian government and the Iranian government all raining missiles down on Israel.
02:27:57.000Raining down missiles and drones probably far more rapidly than, you know, in May the strike took two weeks.
02:28:05.000Iran took two weeks before they responded.
02:28:07.000It's going to happen much more quickly.
02:28:09.000So they're rapidly going to launch an all-out counterattack.
02:28:13.000We don't know what it's going to be or how much and what the damage is going to be.
02:28:17.000That's kind of the open-ended question.
02:28:49.000And the more, the deeper that we get into this escalation, the more that this escalates, the more the United States gets involved, because Israel is biting off more than they can chew, and they're doing it deliberately.
02:29:11.000They deliberately provoked Iran, they know that Iran will respond, and they know the United States will have to defend them.
02:29:18.000So what will happen is Iran will bomb Israel.
02:29:20.000The United States will defend because we'll always protect them.
02:29:24.000Israel cannot fight a war against Hezbollah.
02:29:27.000They cannot fight a war against Hezbollah and Iran.
02:29:30.000But they're going to try anyway because they know that if their back is against the wall, they can blackmail the United States into helping them.
02:29:40.000They know that the United States can't let Israel fall.
02:30:23.000And at that point, the United States can either go to war against Iran and Hezbollah for Israel and defend them, or Israel will say, since you're not defending us, we are going to nuke Iran.
02:30:41.000And that will teach the world never to mess with Israel.
02:30:46.000And this is something that is totally unacceptable for the United States.
02:30:50.000For nuclear weapons to be deployed in the 21st century, and especially right now, it doesn't matter the yield of the warhead, but to get that far on the escalation ladder, for a low-yield nuclear device to be deployed would be catastrophic for global stability.
02:31:07.000What does that portend for the conflict in Ukraine?
02:31:11.000Where the United States is supporting an ally, Ukraine.
02:31:15.000And Russia is now putting out nuclear-capable submarines and fighter jets and moving nukes closer and constantly talking about nuclear weapons.
02:32:18.000Or, I think what's more likely is that Iran and Hezbollah will carry out a major strike, Israel and the United States and Jordan will thwart it, although it will be damaging.
02:32:28.000There may be more fighting, there may be more tit-for-tat strikes, but maybe Iran backs down.
02:32:37.000But what it does is it prolongs the negotiating over Gaza.
02:32:43.000It gives Israel time to rearrange its forces and push them north to prepare for a protracted fight against Hezbollah.
02:32:50.000It gives them time because the election's only a few months away to wait and see what the outcome of that contest will be and what kind of support they'll get from the next president.
02:33:01.000And it shelves the issue of peace in Gaza or a permanent ceasefire.
02:34:49.000The goal from the beginning was to dismantle Iran's network of proxies and disable their nuclear program, and that's exactly what Israel is begging for and what they're going to get.
02:35:01.000And by the way, it just stands to reason the following.
02:35:06.000If Israel sought peace, they would not be provoking their neighbors.
02:35:57.000If Iran gets involved in a confrontation with Israel and the United States, they could spin up a nuclear weapon very quickly.
02:36:05.000And there might be intelligence that they do, whether they do or they don't, there would be intelligence that, hey, if Iran is confronting the U.S.
02:36:12.000and Israel, they're going to say, oh, we just received word that Iran is building a bomb.
02:36:17.000And then there's going to be urgency for the United States to take out those nuclear sites.
02:36:24.000Don't be surprised if that's the narrative.
02:36:53.000And they're going to say that's why the United States needs to use bunker-busting bombs against their facility in the mountain in Fordow and in Natanz and Bushehr and Iraq.
02:37:05.000They're going to go for all of the big nuclear cities and they're going to set Iran back.
02:37:12.000Just like they did to Syria in 2007, just like they did in Iraq in 1981.
02:38:00.000It's very cynical, utilizing their monopoly over the media, lying about things, deliberately provoking their adversaries, nuclear blackmail against the United States.
02:38:11.000This is their sophisticated geopolitical chess.
02:38:16.000To bring in the United States to defeat all of their enemies and keep Netanyahu out of jail.